Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks with reporters after delivering remarks at Defense Innovation Unit Experimental at Moffett Field, Calif., to deliver remarks at DIUx May 11, 2016.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks with reporters after delivering remarks at Defense Innovation Unit Experimental at Moffett Field, Calif., to deliver remarks at DIUx May 11, 2016. Photo by Senior Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz

The DIUx Is Dead. Long Live The DIUx

By taking early corrective action, Ash Carter is upending the typical Washington playbook of prolonging failure.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter launched his high-profile Silicon Valley outpost a year ago to great fanfare and high expectations. Less than a year later, he has completely overhauled its leadership, structure, reporting lines, and resources.

That a new government initiative built around experimentation would struggle in its first year is no surprise. That its founder would candidly address early challenges and publicly identify shortcomings and fixes as a matter of course is a big one. By taking early corrective action, Carter is upending the typical Washington playbook of prolonging failure — or, worse, postponing reform until demanded by scandal — and teaching his Department a critical lesson on how to learn by taking risk.

With its small size and steep learning curve, the DIUx 1.0 could not overcome the weight of expectations from a high-profile launch. As with many startups, the organization suffered from an overly broad purpose and unrealistic demands; unlike other startups, it missed the opportunity to operate in “stealth mode” to address these issues early. By re-focusing the DIUx now, Carter is setting the organization up for longer-term success. And by empowering the DIUx to be a testbed for new kinds of collaboration, he’s demonstrating that DoD can serve as an agile partner to the startup community.

But Carter’s most critical action was giving the DoD a new way to think about failure. The defense bureaucracy, for rational reasons, incentivizes “late” failure: typically spectacular, expensive, and with no real effort to learn from what went wrong. For decades, the logical route for any off-track defense initiative was to keep trying, throw more money at the problem, extend timelines, and add more experts and layers of scrutiny.

Related: All of Defense One's DIUx coverage

Confronted with the results of this culture, during his tenure Secretary Gates terminated the F-22 line, the VH-71 presidential helicopter program, and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and restructured the Army Future Combat System. His decisiveness was met with great applause for taking on failing programs, and far too little attention to what drove such calls to his desk in the first place. Coming after years of troubled acquisition history, these top-down, multi-billion dollar “failures” made big news but did little to change the Pentagon’s culture.

Despite noble attempts at reform through initiatives like the Better Buying Power series, there is still little career upside to calling out potential flaws in DOD investments, and the key risks driving behavior are those associated with disavowing acquisition process orthodoxy. This culture often leads DOD to take the path of least risk up front, avoiding tough choices and embarrassment in the short term but allowing technical and management debt to accrue quickly and quietly. Notable alternative models exist within the defense bureaucracy, but these incentives still persist across acquisition, policy, personnel, management, and operations.

By rebooting the DIUx, Secretary Carter has offered a different path: “early” failure as something to accept, learn from, and even celebrate. This may shape his innovation legacy more than anything else he’s done. The most acute challenge to DOD innovation is not lack of talent, technology, authorities, or resources: it’s perverse incentives that drive bad behavior and decisions.

Carter could have taken the easy path and allowed the DIUx to continue apace, leaving the next administration to dispense with it. Instead, the Secretary led by example and created a practical example of “OK to fail:” a highly desired, frequently discussed but rarely seen scenario in defense circles.  

Despite the Secretary’s leadership and corrective action, the DIUx’s future remains unclear. In launching DIUx 2.0, Carter has addressed core issues of leadership — Raj Shah is an inspired choice as managing partner — and reporting lines, while providing additional resources. However, DIUx 2.0 must still fight for relevance in a defense bureaucracy that is either skeptical or unhelpfully enthusiastic. Whether it can implement collaboration methods “at the speed of business” remains to be seen — and those are just the internal challenges.

Ultimately, DIUx’s success or failure must be measured in practical innovations applied to real DOD problems in collaboration with new partners. With a splashy relaunch and a direct line to the Secretary of Defense, DIUx 2.0 has been given the best possible chance to succeed.  But the organization's products are still alpha releases. DIUx 2.0 will need to execute and start delivering final product rapidly before they burn through the political capital the Secretary has just given them.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.